Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

satellite, natural

(Encyclopedia)satellite, natural, celestial body orbiting a planet, dwarf planet, asteroid, or star of a larger size. The most familiar natural satellite is the earth's moon; thus, satellites of other planets are o...

alpine plants

(Encyclopedia)alpine plants, high-altitude representatives of various flowering plants (chiefly perennials) that because of their dwarf habit, profuse blooming, and the preference of many for shady places are culti...

ocher

(Encyclopedia)ocher ōˈkər [key], mixture of varying proportions of iron oxide and clay, used as a pigment. It occurs naturally as yellow ocher (yellow or yellow-brown in color), the iron oxide being limonite, or...

stellar evolution

(Encyclopedia)CE5 The above Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) diagram shows the track of stellar evolution for a typical star. After spending much of its life evolving toward or along the main sequence, the star becomes...

Phaeophyta

(Encyclopedia)Phaeophyta fēŏfˈətə [key], phylum (division) of the kingdom Protista consisting of those organisms commonly called brown algae. Many of the world's familiar seaweeds are members of Phaeophyta. Th...

Cannon, Annie Jump

(Encyclopedia)Cannon, Annie Jump, 1863–1941, American astronomer, b. Dover, Del. In 1897 she became an assistant in the Harvard College Observatory, where (1911–38) she was astronomer and curator of astronomica...

Pickering, William Henry

(Encyclopedia)Pickering, William Henry, 1858–1938, American astronomer, b. Boston, grad. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B.S., 1879). He taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1880–87) and ...

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans.

(Encyclopedia)Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans., case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954. Linda Brown was denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka because she was black. When, com...

Pluto, in astronomy

(Encyclopedia)Pluto, in astronomy, a dwarf planet and the first Kuiper belt, or transneptunian, object (see comet) to be discovered (1930) by astronomers. Pluto has an elliptical orbit usually lying beyond that of ...

cretinism

(Encyclopedia)cretinism krēˈtənĭzˌəm [key], condition produced in infants and children due to lack of thyroid hormone. It usually results from a congenital defect (e.g., absence of the thyroid, presence of on...